“The boy you were—”
A hard shake of her head. “No. Forget it.” She swallowed. “The lights were on when I went inside, but I couldn’t find anyone.” But she’d smelled a thick, hard odor.
Blood and death.
“I found my dad first. He was in the hallway. His throat had been ripped open.” So much blood. She hadn’t screamed when she’d seen him. She should have, she’d even tried, but her breath had been gone.
She’d dropped to her knees next to him. His precious gun had still been in his hands. Her dad never loaded the thing so it hadn’t done him a bit of good.
Simon’s fingers skated down her cheek and Dee realized she’d dropped her gaze. His hand curled under her chin and he forced her to look at him again.
Better him than the past. “I found my sister next.” She paused, felt the pain. “She was seven.”
They’d killed her in her bedroom, right there next to Sara’s pretty pink bed and her tall, white doll house.
“Some vamps get off on children’s blood. They think it makes them stronger,” he said. “Dee, look at me.”
She was, but she could still see Sara. “She used to drive me crazy. I was so much older and—” And Simon probably didn’t care. He didn’t want to know what a bitch she’d been to her kid sister. Didn’t want to know that she’d run straight to Sara’s room after finding her father, her heart burning her chest. When she’d found Sara, she’d fallen.
The scream had come then. Breaking from her mouth and shattering her.
“I screamed for her, for help, and then I heard the footsteps coming.”
So stupid.
“They would have heard you the minute you entered the house,” Simon said and his face hardened. “The bastards were just playing with you.”
She knew that now. They’d let her find the bodies, let the terror and grief break her, and they’d crept out to watch her. Sick, twisted freaks.
Then they’d attacked.
“Their mouths were stained with blood. When I saw their teeth, I-I didn’t believe what I was seeing at first.”
Because who would believe vampires were real? That they’d just slaughtered your family?
“We’ve been waiting for you, little Sandra Dee, waiting so long.”
Dee jumped and the ice pack tumbled from her fingers. “What? What the hell did you just say?”
His fingers fell away. “I said they were waiting for you, probably trying to make sure you were alone before they attacked. It’s the way the bastards work.”
Yeah, it was.
“How did you get away?”
Because of a miracle. Or, no, maybe because the devil had gotten bored and decided to stir up hell on earth. “My mother came down the stairs.”
Still alive. Dee had gasped those words. One vamp had held her right arm, another her left. She’d thought they were going to rip her apart. And the other vamp bastard—the one with the blond hair, coal black eyes, and the lying, kind face—he’d watched her with a smile.
Her mother had stumbled down the steps. Thick, gaping wounds covered her neck. “The vamps hadn’t been easy with her.” A rusty, broken laugh. “When are they ever easy?” A kind kill wasn’t generally an option for vampires. They liked prey to suffer.
Blood had soaked her mother’s shirt. Her face…“She was so pale. Trembling. And her eyes, they were—” Changing. Fading from a brilliant gold to dark shadows. She hadn’t known what that darkness meant. Not then.
“They laughed when they saw her. Told her that she couldn’t have a drink.” Mom doesn’t drink. The stupid thought had been the fifteen-year-old’s. Her mother never touched alcohol. Never.
His jaw locked but his gaze never wavered. “Finish it,” he gritted.
She didn’t want to. Dee squeezed her eyes shut.
Darkness.
Just like her mother’s eyes.
Were all vampires really bad?
Some hunters claimed a vampire lost his soul when he was transformed. That goodness died and only evil remained. A shifter had told her that once—he’d said the decay and the rot that he smelled from vamps came from the decay inside, where a soul should be.
Maybe the old fox had been full of bullshit, but she’d asked Jude and he’d said he caught the same stench any time a vamp was near.
Except once, he’d told her about a vamp in LA who—
“How did you get away?” he repeated.
Dee opened her eyes. “She—she had a weapon. That thump I’d heard before, she’d broken a table. I guess they didn’t think she had any fight left, but she did.” A bit of pride there. “When she reached the landing, she lunged and stabbed the lead bastard in the back.”
A moment of weakness. That was all she’d needed. Just a moment.
“Go, Sandra Dee. Go,” she whispered her mother’s last words. A sad smile curved her lips. “And I did. I ran and I left her there.” To die.
Rage and fear had twisted her stomach as she rushed down the hall and out of the house. “I left her,” she repeated, voice still soft. The other vamps had turned on her mother when she’d stabbed the leader, and their attack had given Dee that one moment to break away.
Kill them. The thought now was the same as it had been then. Kill them. She hadn’t wanted to get help. She’d wanted to find someone to kill the bastards in her house.
“I ran outside. Went to a neighbor’s.” They hadn’t been close. Not close enough to hear her first scream. If only.
Mark McKenley and his wife Julie had wanted to go to her house, right away. They’d called the cops, and Mark had taken off with his old hunting shotgun. Dee remembered rushing after him, screaming that the gun wouldn’t be enough.
“Something happened in my house.” She licked her lips. “Fire…the smoke, I saw it the minute I went back outside.”
Mom!
“Fire burns fast, you know. So fast.” Greedy flames, licking up the side of her house, peeling the paint away in thick bubbles, eating at her home.
“I know,” his gruff whisper.
Julie had held her back. Mark, sixty, with stooped shoulders and shaking hands, had burst into the burning house, screaming her mother’s name.
He’d stayed inside, until the firefighters arrived and dragged his body out.
Dead. Like the others.
My fault. She hadn’t even been able to look at Julie after that.